If you create any content, you NEED a brand style guide in place. 

Without it, your messaging can easily get diluted, and your visual identity will be inconsistent. 

A brand style guide fixes that. It’s your blueprint for consistency, covering everything from voice and tone to visuals, formatting, and SEO. With one in place, your team can create content that’s unmistakably on-brand, every single time.

Get ready to save this blog post! 

I’ll show you what a brand style guide is, why you need one, and how to create your own. 👇

Highlights

• A brand style guide is a centralized document that defines how a brand communicates across all content formats. It covers tone of voice, formatting rules, SEO guidelines, visual identity standards, and preferred vocabulary — ensuring every piece of content, regardless of who creates it, remains consistent with the brand’s identity and messaging pillars.
• Without a brand style guide, content teams produce inconsistent output that requires constant revision. When writers, designers, and freelancers lack a shared reference, tone, formatting, and visual style vary across assets — creating brand fragmentation, wasted editorial time, and a disjointed audience experience.
• A brand style guide should be built around three core components: tone guidelines, style and formatting rules, and SEO or keyword notes. Tone guidelines define how the brand should sound (e.g., “conversational expert” for B2B, “friendly and approachable” for B2C); formatting rules set structural standards like sentence length, heading hierarchy, and image usage; and SEO notes specify how target keywords should appear naturally across headlines, meta descriptions, and body copy.
• Brand templates are a practical complement to any style guide. Providing contributors with pre-built content templates — such as a structured blog article outline with placeholder sections for meta titles, keywords, headings, and CTAs — reduces guesswork, speeds up production, and minimizes revisions from the start.
• A brand style guide does not need to be complex to be effective. Industry leaders like Microsoft, the MS Society, and the University of Nottingham publish robust multi-page guides, but a well-organized Google Doc divided into sections for tone, formatting, visuals, voice, and SEO is a strong and fully functional starting point that can be expanded over time.

What is a brand style guide?

A brand style guide is a document that outlines your preferences for creating content like blog posts, social media posts, and visual content. It describes your ideal tone of voice and style and may also include SEO guidelines and other helpful notes.

It might have individual sections for different types of content as well. 

For example, you might have a social media guidelines section, a blog content guidelines section, and an email marketing guidelines section. 

Or, you might create separate style guides for each content type.

Why you need a brand style guide 

If you have creators or freelancers producing content for your business, they need a style framework to reference so your content stays on-brand. 

You can think of it as your brand book.

Without one, you’ll receive content assets with various tones, styles, and formatting that may or may not align with your brand strategy. If it’s the latter, you’ll need to request edits or make adjustments yourself. This creates needless back-and-forth and is a time-suck.

*Important Note: It may take a while for you and your contributors to learn your ideal brand style. Edits may be part of the content production process as everyone adjusts.

Benefits of having a brand style guide

Some of the top benefits of having a brand style guide include: 

• Gives you an all-in-one brand manual: Combines tone, formatting, and SEO rules so nothing gets missed. And it’s all in one spot, so it’s easy to reference.
• Provides a more seamless user experience: Gives audiences consistent, high-quality content that feels polished and easy to engage with.
• It’s easier to scale your content initiatives: Makes expanding your content team or projects feel seamless and organized.
• Helps you establish your brand voice: Gives contributors a clear roadmap to match your brand values and vibe.
• Your brand story stays intact: Helps keep every piece of content unmistakably “you,” no matter who creates it.
• Encourages brand recognition: Builds a recognizable, trustworthy presence your audience can rely on.
• Supports content creators to succeed: Cuts down on frustrating edits and endless back-and-forth.

If you’re ready to create your own brand style guide, check out the following steps. 👇

How to create a brand style guide in 3 simple steps 

Here’s how to create your own brand style guide in three straightforward steps.

Step 1: Outline your top priorities for the style guide

What do you hope your style guide will help your brand achieve?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of enterprise marketers say their content strategy improved in the last 12 months (14% significantly, 47% somewhat), while only 11% report a decline, indicating that refining your strategy over time leads to measurable gains.

Some popular style guide priorities include:

• Implementing AI SEO best practices so content has a better chance of pulling up in LLMs
• Using correct grammar or adhering to a published grammar style book
• Formatting content in a specific way to improve its chances of ranking
• Optimizing for SEO to increase the content’s ranking potential
• Having linking rules for authority content and backlinks
• Adhering to brand color guidelines and icon styles
• Making sure brand imagery looks a certain way
• Creating media in a particular format
• Striking the right tone when writing
• Writing in a particular style

If you’re not sure what to prioritize, speak with an SEO content strategist or a marketing agency with experience in your industry. Ask them what best practices and goals they find most important and why. 

(Read over their content and scan their media to see if what they’re putting out aligns with what you’d like your brand to look and feel like.)

Be sure to also ask about data and results:

• What kind of results are they seeing by implementing these guidelines?
  • Aligned clients? Better leads? Impressive rankings and authority scores? 

Here are some results uSERP helped monday.com achieve to give you an idea of what to look for:

(Image Source) 

Step 2: Write out the details that line up with your priorities 

Do you want blog articles written in a conversational tone? Do you want videos formatted in a very specific way? Open a new Google Doc and get all the details down so anyone creating content for you can hit the mark.

Here’s what to work out:

Your tone guidelines

Define exactly how your brand should sound.

Is your brand personality casual, professional, witty, or authoritative? 

Include examples from past content you love (or hate) to make it concrete. This helps contributors understand your voice instantly.

For reference, a highly popular tone for B2B brands is “conversational expert.” This is ideal for business audiences on the go. They get reliable subject-matter information, but it’s presented in an easy-to-understand way.

A common tone for B2C brands is “friendly and approachable.” This makes sense, as it caters to audiences across sectors such as fashion, food, and lifestyle. 

A relevant tonefor luxury brands is “refined and sophisticated,” which appeals to audiences who appreciate elegance.

And a popular tone for health and wellness brands is “empathetic and medically authoritative” to promote accuracy and build trust.

You get the idea.

Your style and formatting musts 

List all of your style non-negotiables, such as:

• Lists and bullets rules: For instance, “Include two to three bulleted lists throughout your content and order lines by length from longest to shortest.”
• Sentence length and paragraph length guidelines: For example, “Max 20 words per sentence and 2-4 lines per paragraph.”
• Sourcing rules: E.g., “Cite the full resource name with a hyperlink, and only use stats or research from the past 2 years.”
• Font and size rules: E.g., “Must use Arial font and size 11 for normal text, size 16 for H2s, and size 14 for H3s.”
• Heading formatting musts: For example, “Use H1s for titles, H2s for main ideas, and H3s for sub-topics.”
• Photography guidelines: For instance, “No stock images — screenshots and original graphics only.”
• Graphic design guidelines: E.g., “Created brand assets must have our logo and brand color palette.”
• Video guidelines: For example, “Must be shot in a vertical style with on-screen captions.”

Your goal is to establish consistency across all content, so nothing looks off-brand.

SEO or keyword notes

Specify the terms, phrases, or topics that should appear naturally in the content. Include notes on where they should go, if necessary, such as in headlines, meta descriptions, or body copy. This helps creators optimize their content without it feeling forced. 

It also ensures your content aligns with search intent, not just keyword placement, which is critical for long-term visibility.

Be sure to also include any info on which SEO tools to use and which scores to hit.

Here’s what Wordable and Codeless require from contributors when it comes to metadata to give you an idea:

(FYI: Image copied from the Wordable/Codeless Guest Content Contribution Guidelines)

Feel free to also create a separate SEO guide or checklist if needed. This is a good idea if your SEO guidelines are super detailed or you have lots of SEO rules.

Content structure guidelines 

Outline how different types of content should flow. 

Here’s a quick example:

• For videos: Opening hook, main points, visual cues
• For blogs: Intro, subheads, calls to action

This saves contributors from guessing and minimizes revisions.

Preferred vocabulary and phrasing 

Identify words and phrases your brand uses often (or should never use). This ensures your content always feels authentic. It also prevents mixed messaging and keeps your brand identity strong.

If you’re not sure what to add here, consider your messaging pillars. What core messages do you want to relay to your audience consistently?

What terms and phrases are in those messages?

I like to include specific dos and don’ts lists in my style guide to encourage a consistent messaging brand experience. 

Here’s a quick screenshot of my don’ts section:

(Image by Ioana from her style guide)

As you can tell, I have a pet peeve when it comes to negatives + “just.” 😂

Visual elements 

Consider your visual assets. What does your content team need to keep in mind?

Depending on what your contributors are helping you create, you might include brand elements, such as:

• Visual identity details, like digital illustrations or design elements 
• Specific brand language to use with visuals
• Your author bio and professional headshot
• Brand colors and color schemes 
• Brand logo usage guidelines
• Layout specifications 
• A mood board

(Make sure to explain what creators can modify and what must stay consistent to preserve your brand’s visual identity.) 

Content examples

Provide links to published content and media that align with all of your priorities. This gives your contributors hard examples they can reference for even more clarity.

*Pro-Tip: Include screenshots (where relevant) throughout your style guide to illustrate your best practices. 

Here’s an example: 

(FYI: Image copied from the uSERP SEO guide)

When you document everything listed above, anyone creating content for your brand will know exactly what’s expected. You’ll save time, avoid endless edits, and maintain a cohesive brand across every post, article, or video. 

Step 3: Create and provide brand templates that complement your style guide 

Make it easier for your team to follow your style guide by providing brand templates. 

This is one of the best ways to help your contributors get into the flow of producing content that meets your expectations. 

Here’s an example of a brand template you might supply your blog content writers with:

2000-Word Blog Article Template

Meta-title: 

Meta-description: 

➜ Link to brand guidelines:

➜ Keywords to include:

➜ Links to include:

➜ Target audience: 

➜ Hex codes:

➜ Brand fonts: 

➜ Logo files:

H1 – Article title

H2 – Introduction (200 words)

(Hook + context + pain point + agitate pain point + solution + thesis)

H2 – Table of Contents

Body (1700 words)

H2 – What is (target keyword)? 

H2 – Why is (target keyword) important? 

H3 – Benefits of (target keyword)

H2 – Main point 1 

H3s or bulleted list if relevant 

H2 – Main point 2

H3s or bulleted list if relevant 

H2 – Main point 3

H3s or bulleted list if relevant 

Conclusion (100 words)

(Brief summary + key takeaways + relevant client CTA)

Author Bio:

Headshot here

<Author’s Name Here>

<Bio Text Here>

3 Style guide examples to inspire your own 

Here are three solid style guide examples you can reference when building yours:

Example 1:

The following brand style guide by the MS Society is pretty impressive. Many brands write their style guides in Google Docs and share them in Google Drive. Or create a Notion template. 

But the MS Society has an entire web page dedicated to it, packed with detailed links: 

(Image Source) 

It includes:

• How to talk about MS and the work they do as an organization.
• How to use numbers, dates, times, and places. 
• Grammar guidelines and formatting guidelines.
• Tone of voice guidelines.
• How to blog for them.
• — and more!

Example 2:

Believe it or not, the University of Nottingham’s style guide is even more robust, with 40+ links that detail how to word, structure, and list things properly:

(Image Source) 

It includes which abbreviations and acronyms to use, how to speak about degrees and dates, and even how to use ellipses and phone numbers. 🙃 And so much more.

Example 3:

Microsoft’s style guide doesn’t play either. 

You can use the table of contents to the left to navigate to sections like brand voice, A-Z word list, design planning, and more.

(Image Source) 

While each of these style guides is pretty impressive, please know that a simple Google Doc is a great start. You can always revamp your style guide later. Or hire WordPress developers to create a dedicated web page for it with clickable links. 

But for now, feel free to start with a Google Doc, format it into sections that are easy to read, and save it to Drive.

Here’s a simple example you can reference to get started. 

(Image by Ioana)

This style guide has five specific sections:

1. Style and tone notes
2. Voice preferences
3. Structure approach
4. Visual preferences
5. SEO guidelines

In each section, bulleted lists guide content creators on what to do.

Start here and add to it as you discover more about your brand identity and how you’d like your content to look and feel.

Wrap up 

Creating a brand style guide might feel like a big project. But it’s one of the smartest investments you can make for your content and your brand. 

It keeps your messaging consistent, your visuals aligned, and your audience experience seamless. With clear guidelines, your team can confidently produce high-quality content, and your brand voice will distinguish you unmistakably.

Start small, document everything, and iterate as your brand grows. Soon, you’ll have a style guide that saves time and elevates your brand in every piece of content.

PS: Need a way to publish your blog posts to WordPress faster and more seamlessly? Get Wordable to start saving hours each week on staging and publishing. 

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FAQs about brand style guides

Why do I need a style guide?

A style guide helps you tell your brand story and keep content aligned with your messaging pillars. Without one, your content can feel inconsistent, confuse your audience, and require constant edits. 

TL;DR: A style guide helps everyone on your team produce content that’s on-brand.

Who should use a brand style guide?

Anyone creating content for your brand should use your brand style guide. That may be writers, designers, marketers, freelancers, or agencies.

What should be included in a brand style guide?

Key elements of a brand style guide include: Your brand voice and tone, style rules, formatting guidelines, SEO notes, visual identity musts, typography, color codes, logos, and content examples.

You might also include details around logo usage and your brand’s core values.

How detailed should my style guide be?

Start with a simple Google Doc. Turn it into a comprehensive guide with templates and examples over time. Include brand visuals, too, so your team can crystallize what you expect.

Can I update my brand style guide over time?

Absolutely. Your style guide should evolve as your brand grows.

How do I make my content marketing style guide easy for my team to use?

Organize it logically. Include examples and screenshots, link to templates, and highlight “must-follow” rules vs. flexible guidelines. You might also include info about logo treatments.

Keep your brand style guide kit clear and accessible. You might also poll your team on their visual style preferences.